Chairman sues worker who says she overheard plan to demote CEO McGraw

Dec. 4, 2013

CVG CEO Candace McGraw / File Photo

Written by

James Pilcher and Jason Williams

An accidental mobile phone call from a hotel room in Italy by the chairman of the board that oversees Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport led to a federal wiretapping lawsuit filed Tuesday against airport CEO Candace McGraw’s administrative assistant, alleging the assistant illicitly recorded the call.

In that conversation, Chairman Jim Huff and Vice Chairman Larry Savage planned to demote McGraw and replace her with Savage, according to the attorney for Carol Spaw, who is the woman sued.

Spaw, McGraw’s assistant, shared the recording with McGraw, who relayed it to the chairman of the airport board audit committee, Frank Kling.

Attorney Randy Freking said Spaw did nothing wrong and followed airport procedure in reporting the contents of the conversation to McGraw.

Freking declined to confirm whether Spaw recorded the conversation. However, multiple sources confirmed the existence of the recording and transcripts of it.

Huff and his wife, Bert, a former airport board member and chairwoman, sued Spaw in federal court in Covington, saying the conversations were overheard because Jim Huff “unintentionally and unknowingly dialed his personal cellphone” to Spaw’s desk number when he was in Italy at an airport conference. Bert Huff was on the trip and in the hotel room during the conversation.

Spaw serves both as McGraw’s assistant and as liaison between the airport board and administration.

“My wife and I have filed suit to protect our rights,” Huff said in a statement provided by his attorney, Mark Guilfoyle, another former airport board member. “Because the airport staff was apparently involved in this behavior, I am requesting that the board undertake an investigation into this matter. Obviously, this type of behavior is an invasion of our family’s privacy and erodes the trust that is necessary for the airport to move forward.”

When asked if he could confirm or deny what was said in the phone call, Guilfoyle said: “Mr. Huff and Mr. Savage were discussing personnel issues, and that is part and parcel of their duties as board members. They should be free to have those conversations without being eavesdropped on, recorded and having those private conversations disclosed.”

The airport board has scheduled for Wednesday both a special meeting of its recently created Human Resources Committee and of the full board. The full meeting is to “discuss the hiring of special legal counsel,” according to the public notice issued Tuesday. CVG’s regular attorney Will Ziegler declined to comment.

The board will be one member short; Kling resigned late Sunday for reasons he would not specify.

The suit seeks unspecified damages under the wiretap law, which prohibits unlawful electronic eavesdropping or recording.

The disclosure is the latest twist in a saga that includes previous attempts to oust McGraw and questions about lavish spending by the airport board on travel and dining – including the trip to Italy, first reported by The Enquirer in October.

Efforts to fire McGraw have come despite positive evaluations. Her last two publicly available performance reviews were conducted in July 2012 by an individual board member as well as an outside consultant; both included overall positive marks. A separate consultant conducted a third review beginning early this year, but results have not yet been made public.

At an August board meeting, some members tried unsuccessfully to fire McGraw in a contentious executive session. Since then, the board agreed to pay $60,000 to hire consultants to coach McGraw as well as help relations between the CEO and individual board members. That’s in addition to $60,000 previously approved to evaluate McGraw’s performance. The board also held a private, closed-door meeting in March to discuss McGraw’s job status.

Huff and Savage have denied making any attempts to fire or otherwise remove McGraw.

Spaw, a 19-year employee at CVG, overheard the conversation Oct. 24.

“While the board members in question were on their controversial trip to Italy, they included Carol in a conversation by dialing her number,” Freking said. “During that conversation, Ms. Spaw heard comments that she believed were inappropriate from board members about Ms. McGraw’s employment and reported them to her boss.”

Freking added: “Filing a lawsuit appears to be retaliation for Ms. Spaw following the airport board’s code of business conduct that requires her to disclose to her boss a possible irregularity on the part of Mr. Huff or Mr. Savage.”

After the phone call, Spaw reported what she heard to McGraw, who then reported it to audit committee chairman Kling as part of airport policy. Kling declined to comment.

When contacted, McGraw and Spaw declined to comment and referred questions to Freking, who said Spaw hired him shortly after the conversation in October.

Freking said he has been working with McGraw since at least August “to review her contract” following the attempt to remove her then.

“Ms. McGraw is concerned about the efforts of certain board members to terminate her despite her employment contracts and despite her record and performance,” Freking said.

The airport board, overseeing a facility that has seen a dramatic downsizing in the past eight years of its Delta Air Lines hub, is also under fire after The Enquirer’s disclosure in October of at least $120,000 in travel and dining expenses since 2011. Kentucky state auditor Adam Edelen last month launched a “special investigation” into those expenses, which included several conferences in the U.S. and abroad and dinners that cost several thousand dollars. ⬛